The present invention relates to writing information to magnetic media, and more particularly, this invention relates to reducing crosstalk between adjacent writers.
In magnetic storage systems, data is read from and written onto magnetic recording media utilizing magnetic transducers commonly. Data is written on the magnetic recording media by moving a magnetic recording transducer to a position over the media where the data is to be stored. The magnetic recording transducer then generates a magnetic field, which encodes the data into the magnetic media. Data is read from the media by similarly positioning the magnetic read transducer and then sensing the magnetic field of the magnetic media. Read and write operations may be independently synchronized with the movement of the media to ensure that the data can be read from and written to the desired location on the media.
An important and continuing goal in the data storage industry is that of increasing the density of data stored on a medium. For magnetic storage systems such as tape- and disk-based storage, that goal has lead to increasing the track density on the recording medium, and decreasing the thickness of the magnetic medium. However, using a tape storage system as an example, the development of small footprint, higher performance tape drive systems has created various problems in the design of a tape head assembly for use in such systems.
In a tape drive system, magnetic tape is moved over the surface of the tape head at high speed, where multiple writers operate at the same time to write data to the tape. In designing a tape system it is desirable to locate the writers close together such that the total span of the head is minimized. This prevents the outer writers from going off track in the face of expansion or contraction of the tape, as is caused by environmental changes. However, as the spacing between the writers becomes smaller and smaller, problems such as crosstalk tend to emerge.
Crosstalk is a phenomenon that can occur when two closely spaced adjacent writers perform writing operations substantially concurrently and the pattern written by the first writer is affected by the magnetic flux created by the adjacent second writer, thereby degrading or otherwise adversely affecting the written information from the first writer.
It is favorable to reduce or eliminate this crosstalk between adjacent heads to improve writing operation efficiency and accuracy.